Tangled in Webs, by Alan Miller

Sydney spider getting fat. Photo © 2011 Alan Miller.

For a long time I was afraid of spiders. My arachnophobia was only cured by moving to a Sydney, a place where some spiders can actually kill you. With the potential of an evil looking funnel web spider under the refrigerator, it seemed silly to recoil at a daddy longlegs. At this time of year — mid-late summer — nonlethal arachnids begin to dominate the bush. With a copious supply of rain earlier this summer, the spiders got an early start. Going down to pick up the paper in the morning means coming back with a web across your face; the same encounter on a bike ride or run is even more unpleasant, especially if you end up eye to eyes with the angry arachnid and its demi-deliquescent protein breakfast. It is one of those moments when you wish nature spoke English — “I’m sorry, but it’s not like wrecking your web gave me any pleasure...”. As the summer progresses we adjust to one another, or they to us; the smarter spiders learn to build their webs up high, with the greatest eight-legged engineers weaving the lowest edges of their webs just above the head of the tallest human.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Music at the Schools: Concert Schedules and more from Northeastern Colleges, Universities, and Conservatories

Meet author, Omar Sangare and his newest Polish publication, Othello. Pale from Envy. Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 at 7 pm, Nowy Dziennik Center, NYC

Omar Sangare in True Theatre Critic. Photo Leland Brewster.


Nowy Dziennik
Polish Daily in New York City


invites you
to meet author, Omar Sangare
and his newest Polish publication,
Othello. Pale from Envy
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 at 7 PM
Nowy Dziennik Center
333 West 38th Street, New York, NY 10018
Admission is free

Program includes:
Book Reading (in Polish)
Poetry Recitation (in English)
Multimedia Presentation (Polish/English)
Conversation with Author (Polish/English)

Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Tully Scope, a New Festival at Lincoln Center: Preview and Concert Schedule, by Michael Miller

A performance in the Grand Foyer and Morgan Stanley Lobby of Alice Tully Hall (Ethel: not in Tully Scope). Photo Richard Termine.

An exciting new festival at Lincoln Center will make an already busy period — February 22 to March 18 — even busier. It bears the slightly odd (and slightly clumsy, I think) name, Tully Scope Festival. But no matter, the offerings, which cover a vast range of the best in early music, traditional classical music, contemporary, experimental, and crossover, are entirely compelling, and will make this a valuable addition to the already rich cultural life on the Upper West Side.

Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Re:Incarnation: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, by Gabriel Kellett

A Scene from Uncle-Boonmee who Can Recall his Past Lives.

The first Thai winner of the Palme d'Or after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and so far seen mostly in Europe, Uncle Boonmee

 is about to get a limited release in New York City, while the Region 2 DVD is released in March. Here in the UK it was first shown at the London Film Festival in October 2010 before going on general release (i.e. in London and perhaps a few other big cities) a month later. I belatedly caught up with it on the day it was excluded from the Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language Film, a decision that I can now say seems quite understandable – for reasons not of quality, but of cinematic style.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Tanglewood 2011 Summer Season Schedule: more pop, less solo and chamber music, cautious orchestral programming…but still lots of good things. (REVISED)

James-taylor
James Taylor. Photo: Danny Clinch.

There will be a modicum of grumbling in this preview, which doesn't mean that Tanglewood no longer  offers a variety of superb music-making which will appeal to music-lovers of many different tastes.

With this season, it is apparent that the change of scheduling — more importantly the shape of the season — at Tanglewood is intended to be permanent. In the past the Music Director and the BSO got the Festival off to a rousing start on the Fourth of July weekend with a Tchaikovsky symphony or some other grandiose work of popular appeal. (I don't know how long the actual Fourth of July program has been a pop concert.) Beginning in 2008, that holiday weekend has become the property of James Taylor, the ever-popular singer, guitarist, and local resident. In fact the entire first week of the season will be a James Taylor festival, with performances in Ozawa Hall on June 28th, 29th, and 30th, and in the Music Shed with the Boston Pops on July 1st, followed by A Prairie Home Companion on July 2nd, culminating in two performances of The Essential James Taylor on July 3rd and 4th. The BSO concerts now begin and end a week later than in the past.

 

Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller

A Singer's Notes by Keith Kibler 28: Steven as Cordelia

Steve Bodner

I just drove past Steven’s little house. The front drapes were heavy -- closed, a little open between. I thought of Cordelia, early in the play, how her mouth must have been a little open, waiting for the words to come. Sisters had eaten all the words, devoured the supply. Then I thought of the supernatural hearing Lear has at the end of the play. How in the recognition scene he sees his daughter again for the first time. Their world is washed. This second Cordelia speaks directly, tersely, with no hesitation. Even at the end when she is dead and truly silent, Lear sees the life in her. He commands others to see. He hears her too. Like Steven’s, her voice was ever soft and low. The others will not hear. Blind and deaf as we are, we side with them. Skeptical is cool. But Lear more than insists that he sees and hears. He commands others to see and hear. There is always the sense that a silent Steven is the hardest thing. Like something has eaten his words. Silence is also the fullest thing. No-one knows this better than a musician.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Passions according to Joshua: ClaverackLanding and Helsinki Hudson presents Joshua Rifkin

ClaverackLanding
, Gwen Gould, Director, at Helsinki Hudson

Joshua Rifkin, 

piano
Rags, Tangos, Preludes, Fugues
Music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Scott Joplin, and Ernesto Nazareth

Bach: Prelude in C Major S.846/1; Joplin: "The Entertainer"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in F Major S.856; Joplin, "Elite Syncopations"; Nazareth: "Vitorioso"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A♭ Major S.862; Nazareth: "Plangente"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C Minor S.847; Joplin: "Solace"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B♭ Minor S.866; Nazareth: "Fon-Fon!"; Joplin: "Magnetic Rag"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B♭ Minor S.867.

Josh-rifkin-michael-robert-wil
Joshua Rifkin (Photo: Michael Robert Williams)

When was it? 1972, 1973? Joshua Rifkin performed Scott Joplin at Alice Tully Hall. I had recently been bitten by the Joplin bug, largely owing to Mr. Rifkin's recordings, and remember hearing his lilting interpretations of the "Maple Leaf Rag," "Elite Syncopations," and "Magnetic Rag." His recordings on Nonesuch spurred a peculiarly "Rifkinesque" revival of ragtime. Recordings of rags, even of Joplin's, had been plentiful, but all done in a heavily nuanced "honky-tonk" technique with performers like Knocky Parker, Max Morath, or Dick Hyman; Joplin, an African-American genius who became a sensation with the "Maple Leaf Rag" of 1899, was poorly served when performed  in the "finger-bustin'" style of Zez Confrey or Euday Bowman. Mr. Rifkin's revisionist approach to Joplin was to play these rags "as is," with little embellishment rubato

, or improvisation. Mr. Rifkin still adheres to a reserved comme scritto style that typifies his approach to all of his musical passions, including his pioneering approach to J. S. Bach. After Mr. Rifkin's recordings, Joplin was seen as a master of a genre that straddled both classical and popular idioms. In his poised interpretation, Mr. Rifkin clearly underscores Joplin's own view of himself as a composer expressing African-American idioms in a classical, Western formalism. While few interpreters following Mr. Rifkin's successful albums performed Joplin in this crystalline way, classically trained musicians throughout the seventies, influenced by his recordings, took a far more serious look at ragtime and at Joplin's music in particular. As a "cross-over" phenomenon, it was clear that Marvin Hamlisch's huge public success with Joplin's "The Entertainer" in the popular film The Sting owed much to Mr. Rifkin's groundbreaking work.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




The Lexington Symphony to play the world premiere of an important revised work by Yehudi Wyner, Sat. Feb. 5, 8pm at Lexington Center

Yehudi Wyner in his Workspace. Photo Michael Miller 2010.
Yehudi Wyner in his Workspace. Photo Michael Miller 2010.


Lexington Symphony
at Cary Hall, Lexington Center
Jonathan McPhee, Music Director
Saturday, February 5 at 8pm
Conductor’s talk 7pm

Wyner – Fragments from Antiquity (1978-81, revised 2010-11) WORLD PREMIERE
Dominique Labelle, Soprano
Brahms – Symphony No. 4

National winner of the Metropolitan Opera competition Dominique Labelle joins the Lexington Symphony for an exciting concert featuring a world premiere and Brahms’ 4th Symphony. The Symphony commissioned Pulitzer Prize winning composer Yehudi Wyner to revisit his youthful piece Fragments from Antiquity and create a new work for soprano and full orchestra; the resulting work receives its world premiere at this concert.  Dominique Labelle, described by The Washington Post as having “an astounding voice, one of impassioned resonance and incredible skill,” is the soprano soloist.

This should be an especially effective program, since Wyner's music shows strong affinities with Brahms'.

See also our podcast interview with Mr. Wyner.


Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Life in a Day, a YouTube user-shot feature video, by Eliot Vivante

, a YouTube user-shot feature video, premiered at Sundance and streamed live in select countries yesterday on YouTube (a theatrical release is planned for later this year). It was produced by Ridley and Tony Scott and assembled by Kevin MacDonald together with a team of editors (headed by Joe Walker) from 81,000 raw video clips shot and submitted on 24 July 2010 by the YouTube Community — potentially anyone with a camera and an internet connection.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller